Few deaths linked to South Carolina state parks

COLUMBIA — People hoping to avoid death this Labor Day weekend might consider holing up in one of South Carolina’s four-dozen state parks.

That’s one way to interpret state fatality numbers, which show a steady average of just a half-dozen dead bodies surfacing at state-operated beaches, campsites and trails.

The numbers contrast with a series of recent high-profile fatal accidents in national parks and an upward trend in fatalities on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 422 recreational parks nationwide.

While both suggest leaving your couch is getting more dangerous, two years of state park incidents point to the opposite.

“When you look at the number of people who come to the 47 parks, literally millions of people, and divide it by 365 days of the year, it would be a city bigger than Columbia,” said Marion Edmonds, spokesman for the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

“A large part of the answer is people who are about to die, people who are really ill and in danger of dying, they’re not going to a state park anyway,” he said. “We’re dealing with healthy people.”

At Hunting Island State Park, which is the state’s most popular state park, Beaufort County EMS responded to only 49 calls for help since September of last year. Park goers had suffered stingray bites, chest pains, respiratory problems, rip currents and a variety of other emergencies, said the department director Donna Ownby. She said the volume of Hunting Island incidents is a relatively small portion of their overall calls.

In July the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revealed that since May there had been a 32 percent increase in deaths on people have died across Corps land his year. The total was 57 fatalities, largely drownings, compared to 39 for the previous year. Of the drownings, said the Corps, 90 percent had no life preserver.

The Corps’ Savannah District had recorded nine recreation-related fatalities for the fiscal year on the district’s three reservoirs—Hartwell, Richard B. Russell and J. Strom Thurmond. At the same time last year, there had been eight fatalities.

Edmonds said there were hundreds of reports of automobile break-ins and cabin burglaries, but the volume of injuries reported to state parks authorities have fallen significantly over the years.

“What’s happening is that cell phones are in everybody’s pockets,” he said. “A lot of folks don’t even talk to a ranger. In the old days you had to go to a ranger and report it. But today everybody just Googles, calls directly and goes,” he added. “Often we’re the last to know. The people will just have taken care of it themselves.”Getting to the park is a different story.

Since Wednesday, 526 people were killed on the highways, compared to 516 in the same time period in 2010, according to the S.C. Department of Public Safety.

Monday marks the end of what safety officials call the 100 Deadly Days of Summer because of the spike in traffic deaths and wrecks caused by heavier traffic that begins on Memorial Day and ends on Labor Day.

• Calhoun Falls State Recreation Area — Abbeville County — Double homicide March 22. The murder victims were found at an isolated boat ramp. Authorities believe someone from Georgia murdered his parents and left their bodies at the site.; Drowning July 4.

• Devils Fork State Park — Oconee County — A man died after a rope became wrapped around his neck while he was tubing on Lake Jocassee on Aug. 21, 2010.

• Kings Mountain — York and Cherokee counties — The body of a woman who had been reported missing was found off of a park road on Oct. 9, 2010. Officials determined the person had been murdered elsewhere and the body was deposited next to the park.

Fatalities from Aug. 1, 2009-July 31, 2010:

• Lake Hartwell State Recreation Area — Oconee County —The victim died while asleep on April 3, 2010. Officials suspected a drug overdose was the cause.

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